Residents of Over-the-Rhine, elected officials and others spent more than five years crafting a plan to calm traffic on Liberty Street in order to attempt to stitch the southern and northern halves of Over-the-Rhine back together again.
Last month, City of Cincinnati administration abruptly shelved the project, saying a water main that needs relocated will cost an extra $960,000 — money not included in the project’s $2.3 million budget. That angered many advocates of the street calming effort, including some Cincinnati City Council members, who say the water main relocation is an excuse to kill the project because it could create traffic difficulties when a new FC Cincinnati stadium is built nearby in the West End.
The project was shelved as calls for increased efforts around pedestrian safety continue amid several high-profile accidents in which walkers have been killed or injured in Cincinnati.
Now, some new options are on the table for Liberty Street. The city administration has proposed a compromise — some bump-outs, or extended curbs, that would reduce the width of Liberty Street from 75 to 63 feet in places while keeping the road at seven lanes.
That’s a lot different than the original plan. That project would have narrowed the road down to five lanes during peak hours and three lanes (with parking on both sides of the street) during non-peak hours. It would have also increased sidewalk widths up to 20 feet wide in some locations.
The goal: take Liberty Street back to its original state before the city, inspired by I-75, widened the road in the 1950s. Today, Liberty Street is a high-traffic connector between that highway and I-71.
In addition to complications with the water main, the original OTR plan was drawn up before FC Cincinnati’s West End stadium on Central Avenue entered the picture, city planners say. As such, a new traffic study is needed, city administration says. That’s led to a call for a pause, and for the scaled-back traffic calming effort with the bump outs.
OTR resident Peter Hames isn’t thrilled with the city administration’s new plan. He worked on the Casino Neighborhood Working Group, which designed the initial plan.
“We are opposed to the current proposal, which in essence would scrap the project proposal we worked on for five years and would instead leave the street pretty much alone except for adding some bump-outs,” he told council today.
As the administration proposes a scaled-back version of the traffic calming measure, Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld wants to save the original plan by selling the city’s land rights for the Whex parking garage on Fourth Street downtown. That garage is already leased until 2053, Sittenfeld points out. Sittenfeld says if the traffic calming measure doesn’t go forward, he’ll be a no vote on a pivotal residential parking plan coming before council soon. That plan includes residential parking permits for residents of Over-the-Rhine and a proposed elimination of parking minimums for developers in downtown and OTR.
The city’s plan met with some stiff opposition from some members of council, who see the project’s sudden shelving as a move designed to appease FC Cincinnati.
“There are very few projects I’ve seen neighborhoods take on where residents have given hundreds of hours of their time,” Cincinnati City Councilman Chris Seelbach said during a committee meeting today. “This is one of those projects where everything was done right. It was a very collaborative process. And up until a month ago, everyone believed it was funded. And then all of a sudden, people who haven’t been part of this collaborative process decided they wanted to abandon it and are coming up with a thousand reasons why it can’t happen.”
Among those reasons are the aforementioned water main. The city administration also says the original plan would mean the loss of 80 parking spaces, which would cost the city between $75,000 and $125,000 a year in revenue. Administration also points to the fact that the work to move that main would have to be done by Greater Cincinnati Water Works, something the administration says would trigger the city’s Responsible Bidder ordinance, a law supported by Seelbach that requires contractors working with GCWW to have apprenticeship programs. That could raise the cost of the project.
Seelbach, however, says that the work wouldn’t be a major GCWW project and thus wouldn’t carry Responsible Bidder requirements.
He also says the project would also generate money for the city. The extra 20 feet of space created along the side of Liberty Street could be sold to developers building housing or retail space, generating immediate revenue for the city and kick-starting the northern section of OTR economically.
“We’re clearing the way for buildings,” he said. “Housing, jobs created. We can try to make sure that housing is affordable, too. It’s much bigger than street calming. It has the ability to be transformational for this neighborhood if we do it right.”
The city’s timing has raised questions from Seelbach and other council members. Until last month, the city said the project was completely funded and ready to start. Then, not long after FC Cincinnati announced it would build its stadium in the West End and scored a franchise with Major League Soccer, the city said the project’s costs would balloon due to the water main and other issues. It will now cost $4.2 million, city administration says.
Council members want to know why the city is just now realizing the water main would have to be relocated.
“It does raise questions,” Landsman says. “We made a commitment that we were going to get this project done. If there are legitimate, non-FCC related reasons for changing course, people might be sympathetic. But if this is about FCC, about something that is going to happen 18 to 22 times a year… I think people are going to find that to be very problematic.”
Cincinnati Department of Transportation and Engineer Director Don Gindling says that under the original plan, parts of the water main would end up underneath sidewalks or curbs. That would make maintenance much more difficult and expensive. Thus, Greater Cincinnati Water Works would need to move the current water main, something they don’t have the money to do. The main was just replaced in 2003 and should have a 100-year lifespan.
The city can’t place the water main under sidewalks and curbs, Gindling says, “because now you have manholes coming up through the sidewalk and the curb. That doesn’t work.”
Acting Cincinnati City Manager Patrick Duhaney said the suggested pause isn’t primarily about FCC.
“This is really just a request for a pause, and the primary reason for that pause is a funding gap,” he said during a council committee meeting today, adding that if council comes up with the money, city administration will carry out the project.
Cue Sittenfeld’s plan — if he can get enough members of council to sign on to it.
This article appears in Aug 29 – Sep 5, 2018.